Well, how about some positive news to end this day? How about annoying the heck out of the Business Software Alliance? There's a new proposal for a directive on consumer rights in the EU, and in it, digital goods - software, online services, and so on - are explicitly defined as goods that are no different than any other good - like bread, watches, or cars. In other words, you would suddenly own the copies of software you buy, effectively declaring the EULA as a worthless piece of paper. Surprise - the BSA is not happy about this.

1) Because defective hardware is much more expensive to rectify than buggy software (think recalling hardware products as opposed to pushing out or making available software patches), hardware is tested far more vigorously in QC than software.

2) Microchip issues may be more common than you think, as often hardware issues can be worked around in software. How many people have had graphical glitches resolved by updating their graphics card drivers? What's to say those issues aren't in the silicon, and were just mitigated by workarounds in the updated driver?

These come from my personal experience developing hardware and firmware for medical equipment for a living...